T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

arenrt really listening, hence, she has to raise her voice and&out a little to be heard:Well, after a point, one is not comfortably bicultural-Iwas when I wrote Tiqer's D a u m ;now I am no longer so and America is more real to methan India. India especially the Hindu religion-hasgiven me a way of looking at things, but India ispart of the past that I am proud of but my life ishere. I need to belong. America matters to me-ratherAmerica transformed me. The letting go of India wasvery traumatic, but to hang on willy-nilly to anoutdated image of the country you've left is toInsulate yourself. As I move from campus to campus,young immigrant Indians are experiencing a seriousgenerational conflict. (Pate1 1989,129)Mukherjee's characters, especially the ones in her laterbocks, have urgent, rivetting volces. They speak In thecomtemporary idioms as immigrarts handle lt, each richlyreflecting the cadences of their original language on whichthey have grafted a new distinctive regional Amerlcanness. Shecredits her flawless ventriloquism to a very good ear thatunconsciously picks up nuances of languages. More importantlyit 1s havlng married an Amerlcan, Clark Blaise (a wrlter) who"has cpened up for me an America that is normally closed toimmigrants".(Carvalho 1991,9) Mukherjee's material is new,Surprising and vital. This confrontation between the Thirdkorld and the First has somehow escaped the attention ofAmerican authors. But with motel-owning Patels, grocery StoreowningKoreans, illegal West Indian domestics and refugees from